Back in 2002 I was fortunate enough to see the Gorillaz live at the Warfield in San Francisco. I was in the front row, and they projected video clips of the songs on a screen as they played behind it. They would dim and raise the lights at random so every now and then you could see the band performing, it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been too. Since then, they’ve been one of my absolute favorite bands, and having the amazing artwork of Jamie Hewlett has never hurt this point either.

I was listening to some B-Sides of their’s this morning, and I came across this song called ‘Stop the Dams‘, which funny enough has it’s own Wikipedia page. The song was a B-Side to the double single ‘Kids With Guns/El MaÃ±ana‘, and is hypnotically melodic, featuring The Reyjavik West End Brass Band who play some amazing horn parts throughout. The song itself was written in protest to the dams that are being built in areas of Iceland that could cause flooding, polluting some of the wilderness there. He has particular interest in this area because he has a house in Grafarvogur, a suburb of ReykjavÃ­k, since the early nineties.

While the Iron Man trailer below lifted my spirits, the news I’m about to impart has me pretty damn sad. It’s been revealed that Where The Wild Things Are has not only been pushed back to October of 2009, but the studio executives are thinking of re-shooting AND rewriting the script without the help of Dave Eggers. The reason? It scared kids.

I found this really amazing letter from someone who’s seen the movie and decided to write Harry Knowles over at Ain’t It Cool News to try and get the support the movie needs to keep it in it’s current state. Reading the letter you truly begin to understand how absolutely this amazing could be. It’s no longer just a children’s book, it’s a movie about childhood, and how hard it can be growing up. The Wild Things now represent different aspects of Max, and his relationships with his family. The idiots at Warner Bros. seem to think that this movie should be nothing but box office fodder filled with pathetic computer graphics and whimsical characters.

I really hope they executives at WB don’t fuck this up, because if they leave it the way it is, I have no doubt in my mind they would not only have a blockbuster, but it would be critically acclaimed and a classic for the years to come. If you have a blog, or a Myspace, or anything else, please pass this information along so that the shitheads at Warner Bros. can possibly realize how idiotic they’re truly being.

A new Iron Man Trailer has popped up onto the web, and man-oh-man they keep getting better and better! This time around you get a better idea of the general story, that the people who capture him use his Iron Man schematics to make a bigger, scarier kind of Iron Man. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be a variation of The Crimson Dynamo, but in the movie he’s called Iron Monger. The trailer is absolutely mind blowing looking, especially in the special effects department. The part where he opens those flaps to create drag and goes zipping behind the jets… so effing rad.

Two other exciting things to note that I noticed on IMDB. Sam Jackson is going to be playing Nick Fury, which is coo because the NIck Fury in Marvel’s Ultimate universe is modeled after Mr. Jackson. The other odd cameo is Ghostface Killah as a “Dubai Tycoon”, who’s first album was also named Ironman, so I’m guessing his cameo isn’t exactly a coincidence.

The movie comes out May 2nd, and I’m totally ready to camp out for this one.

Last night I popped over for the launch of Geoff McFetridge’s new line of wallpaper, Pottok, as well as the opening party of Walnut Wallpapers new store. When I got over to the store there was no parking to be found anywhere, but thankfully Walnut was cool enough to have free valet parking for everyone who attended the event.

Inside they had all of the Pottok wallpapers lining the walls, a big table full of food, and free pins were being given away. But the best giveaway of the night had to be the samples of wallpaper which had been cut with a scalloped edge and signed on the back by Geoff himself. I grabbed two samples, which are definitely going to be framed and hung in my bathroom asap.

It was also pretty rad because I saw a ton of people I knew, including Amber who works at my office as an intern, the lady from Walnut who’s name I can’t remember because it’s too late, Lisa who I used to write with at LAist, and an old friend who really wasn’t happy to see me, haha… It’s just weird because everyone seemed to know each other, proving just how small of a world it really is. I also had a chance to talk to Geoff for a minute as well and he told me that one of the designs, which is not on the website but I do have pictures of under the cut, features a ton of people he knows including his assistant and was made in part for a friend who passed away.

The other day, possibly yesterday, I randomly came across this live performance by James Mercer who’s better known as the lead singer and guitar player for The Shins. I saw The Shines perform live at UC Davis in 2004, and I really wasn’t impressed by their performance. In fact, they were kind of boring, or off, I really don’t know. The last year, Jeff saw them in Boston ans said pretty much the same thing, that they sound just like the CD, which isn’t very cool because you could just save your money and listen to the CD at home.

But this live performance taken from The Moonshine Festival is just James with his guitar and a harmonica, and it’s absolutely beautiful. He sings with such a simple passion, but he’s never sounded better in my opinion. I’m sure this would have been a totally amazing show to be at, but this is the first time I’ve heard of him playing solo. Even though he’s by himself, he covers a lot of Shins songs including Caring is Creepy which I’ve put below for you all to listen to. He also does a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’, which is pretty damn amazing as well.

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I’ve had this link open for like a week now, so that’s probably a good sign that I should post about it. Some mad genius has come up with the idea of taking Garfield out of the Garfield comic strip, leaving just John, a sad, pathetic, schizophrenic man who talks to no one but himself and freaks out on a constant basis. It’s funny how without Garfield there, it totally looks like John has multiple personalities, going from one extreme emotion to the next. How someone would even think this up is beyond me, but it’s pretty dang good. Click here to take the journey that is Garfield Minus Garfield.

The Greener Grass has done it again, coming up with yet another awesome way of helping the environment using good design. I posted about their Current State iPhone Concept earlier this month, but now they’ve got a phone idea that’s all their own.

The concept is called Linc, and while it looks and does everything like an iPhone, that’s not what makes it cool. What makes it stand out is that device already has its life planned out for it. Basically you lease the Linc for about a year until they send you a new one with all the fancy upgrades that usually come along a year later. You then sync all of the data from your existing phone to the new one, then ship your old one away to be recycled. Their idea is that older Linc’s could be disassembled Johnny 5 style and the materials could be re-used for future versions of the phone.

I personally think this could work simply because they make it look so easy to do. I mean, they would send you the cool new phone that makes your out-dated phone look antiquated! And getting your existing info onto your new phone would be a breeze as well. One thing they would definitely need to include is a system that wipes all the info off of your phone, I know I wouldn’t want someone getting my phone numbers off my old phone. It would be cool if Apple could implement some sort of program like this, thought I’m not quite sure how well it would go over with people.

Would you pay a monthly leasing fee instead of one big sum to be up-to-date with the coolest phone and help the environment?

I can easily admit that I have a problem with magazines. I think I always have, though now-a-days my 25 year old paycheck is larger than my 19 year old paycheck, so I tend to buy a lot more. This habit leads to having stacks of magazines all over my apartment. But if I had something like this Ladd Magazine Holder by METAPHYS, this probably wouldn’t be so bad, and my apartment would be a lot cooler looking.

I’m not entirely familiar with METAPHYS, though I know they all into the same minimal, Japanese design category as Muji and plusminuszero. Basically it’s awesome stuff you can only get in Japan (Muji being the recent exception). Ladd up there goes for ï¿¥49,800, or about $50 dollars$500 DOLLARS. I totally put my decimal point in the wrong place, and now I regret posting these. They are rather cool, but nowhere near $500 cool. I’ll just got to some craft fair and buy a ladder made out of branches or something…